COMPANY CASE STUDY
How CloudApps Are Mastering Business Success
By Jonathan Simnett, Senior Advisor, Ariadne Capital M
uch has been written about the conditions that spawned the growth of Silicon Valley into the world’s preeminent technology cluster. However, what’s been clear for many years is that US entrepreneurs have access to a broader and bigger range of funds than their UK cousins.
Arguments about culture, education and markets aside, much of the motor for this success comes from the virtuous circle of more successful exits producing more investments which produce more successful exits and so on. Without producing Silicon Valley’s global game changers such as Amazon, eBay and Apple, such a cycle has been slow to establish itself in the UK. But there are signs that, at last, Europe is producing not just its own young, start-up entrepreneurs but a new class of active investors, managers and directors, with a track record of success that may ultimately bear more fruit. These individuals have decades- worth of experience in growing the EMEA and global operations of some of the most successful IT companies and are now ploughing back their wealth and experience into a tranche of successful new start-ups.
New approaches to improving business performance
One of these firms, Thames Valley-based CloudApps, sees the challenging on-going economic climate as a huge opportunity to enable economic renewal. Shrinking markets have created an environment of greatly increased competition, where the need for organisations to find new approaches to improve their performance has never been more pressing.
It should be clear to anyone who has built or worked in a fast-growing business that old, industrial-age ‘top-down’ management approaches are failing. In contrast, the new, vibrant `bottom up` digital-age ‘socially-connected’ businesses are consistently able to demonstrate business success and out-perform the old guard. CloudApps founders realised that ensuring effective and efficient teamwork in this new world relies on enabling individuals to interact across departmental boundaries; to take ownership of corporate challenges and be recognised and rewarded for their innovation and behaviour.
Also, making corporate goals and employee rewards transparent to the entire organisation breeds the levels
36 entrepreneurcountry
of engagement and innovation that not only create opportunities, but delivers the potential to rapidly solve problems across the organisation and its supplier and customer base.
Embedding innovation business culture
This new model of doing business embeds innovation and intrapreneurship into business culture. It forms a virtuous circle that improves product and service offerings, enhances brand reputation and attracts the premium customers and the highest calibre employees, creating the momentum that builds the strongest and most successful organisations.
As CloudApps CEO Peter Grant emphasises, “Our proposition is simple. We deliver increased business performance by enabling employee behavioural change.” But to truly understand the complexities of this a management team is required, not only to commit time and money to building a new company but to have understanding that comes from growing successfully and turning around businesses. There also needs to be passion in order to maximise the impact that positive employee behaviour has on the efficiency and success of the organisation.
and intrapreneurship into
CEO of CloudApps, Peter Grant
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